Monday, February 16, 2015

A tough subject: Wit (Mike Nichols, 2001)

Forget
about the morbid adolescents of Restless, the cheesy
bromance of 50/50, and even the well-off academics of The
Barbarian Invasions. Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by
Margaret Edson and directed by Mike Nichols in 2001, Wit stars
Emma Thompson as an unmarried English literature scholar diagnosed with advanced
ovarian cancer who realizes that all she can count on are her sharp intellect
and the metaphysical poems of John Donne.

The film begins in medias res as oncologist Kelekian draws an indelible
dividing line between a "before" and an "after" in Vivian Bearing's
life with a single, devastating sentence: "You have cancer". (You might
notice, as I did, echoes of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly's
opening scene in the abrupt way Christopher Lloyd enters the frame from the
left side. Am I exaggerating here?...) Vivian's reaction — a caustic,
imperturbable irony with just a slight hint of fear in her eyes — is no less shocking.
In fact, this exchange doesn't resemble any of the situations that most movies
about diseases have accustomed us to: she doesn't panic, is perfectly aware of
her health condition, and seemingly in full control of her emotions. Kelekian
has barely finished explaining the details of the imminent chemotherapy when
Vivian glibly shifts the conversation to more pleasant subjects; she talks
about her students and complains about their deficient preparation, as if by
now she had absorbed the bad news and could nonchalantly engage in smart
talk.

This scene is rendered with an alternation of close-ups that are all the more powerful since they are not preceded by any establishing shot. Note that few scriptwriters would put such a scene in the first page; more commonly, the diagnosis scene is delayed until we have familiarized enough with the characters, with the
obvious purpose of maximizing the dramatic impact of the revelation. But here we
still don't have made ourselves comfortable on the couch that this fatal
boundary has already been crossed. Draining out every drop of sentimentalism
from what could have been the film's most poignant scene is just the first step
of a strategy aimed at taking viewers out of comfort zone. Nichols doesn't want
to jerk tears from us. He wants us to face the possibility that one day we
might find ourselves in the same situation as Vivian's, and what better way than to throw the word
"cancer" in our face even before we get to see the main character?

Which
brings us to the next anomaly. What generally makes the chronicle of a
degenerative and possibly terminal disease tolerable to an average viewer is
the presence of an affective bond of some sort between protagonist and family, lovers,
friends. For instance, in Alexander Payne's Nebraska old
Woody's progressive dementia has also repercussions on his son and wife, who
understandably struggle to accept and cope with the situation. Adam Lerner, the
young radio producer protagonist of Jonathan Levine's 50/50,
is forced to take stock of his relationship and friendships as he is diagnosed
with a malignant spine tumor. In Denys Arcand's The Barbarian
Invasions, Rémy's terminal cancer leads to an animated reunion of pretty
much all his relatives, friends and colleagues, who do their best to make his
departure as gentle as possible. In an older post I also analyzed Felix Van Groeningen's heartbreaking but by no means schmaltzy
The Broken Circle Breakdown, about the disintegration of a
family as its youngest member is found to have cancer. All these instances
present the disease progression from two standpoints, that of the patient and
that of the people around him or her, so that the prospect of death is somewhat
softened by the presence of other characters reinforcing our belief that "life
goes on". By contrast, our Vivian has no spouse, relatives, friends or
whoever to sustain her, nor are we allowed to empathize with the relatively
comfortable sorrow of the survivors. The film is merciless in its insistence on
those things we are most reluctant to think about, namely that death is
ineluctable and, worst of all, that we might not be given the luxury of passing away
while asleep. In this case saying to ourselves "it's just a movie" is
a small consolation, because deep down we know that reality is far worse.

Which
partly explains why the movie can also be seen as a kind of warning, although
not in the purgatorial sense some critics have proposed. In fact, a
movie telling the story of an aloof and arrogant person whose defenses and
beliefs are finally put to a test, is irresistibly read as a cautionary from-riches-to-rags
tale, and the possibly tragic outcome as a well-deserved punishment. Here are
some examples:

"Words, logic, and rational
observation take the place of attachment, warmth, and love. But this trade-off
comes at a sizable cost [emphasis mine]: one is forced to become an island." [Chad Perman,
Bright Wall/Dark Room]

"[Staging] draws viewers
into the sterile, enclosing whiteness of the hospital where this brilliant
scholar's redemption [emphasis mine] takes place as her
plume of life steadily shrinks." [Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles
Times]

"Vivian finds her formidable
intellect counts for nothing in an environment that regards her merely as a
research tool. Too late [emphasis mine] perhaps, Vivian realises a little kindness goes a long
way." [Neil Smith, BBC]

I disagree
with such stances for two reasons. First, to deny that Vivian's wit is
essential to her survival inside the hospital environment would mean missing the
whole point of the movie. Even if Vivian feels remorse for how she used to
treat people in the past and gratitude for those who now take care of her
health, intellectual ferocity comforts and sustains her throughout all her medical
odyssey. After all she's a woman who, after having profusely vomited in a plastic
basin, finds the strength to say, "God, I'm gonna barf my brains out. If I
did actually barf my brains out... it would be a great loss to my
discipline." And second, the film tells a story — it doesn't deliver a
homily. Vivian's cancer is no divine punishment, and does not imply a judgment.
I think that Nichols' intention is to show how Vivian's attitude towards life,
far from being a conglomerate of abstract philosophical principles, has made
her exactly how she is now — isolated and lonely, and wholly dependent on the
kindness of strangers. But cancer is just something that happens: poetic
justice has nothing to do with it. Thus if one was to draw a lesson out of
this, that would be that our convictions and beliefs, no matter how
metaphysical or abstruse, shape our lives in unthinkable ways — and certainly
not that love is all that counts.

I realize
now that the description I've just given might suggest that Wit is at best a bore and at worst a torture, but that's not
the case. Although you'll probably have more invigorating experiences in your
cinematic life, Nichols nevertheless finds a way to keep things lively despite
the tough subject matter by preserving much of the original theatrical form. Thompson
breaks the fourth wall constantly, making the viewer an active part of the
narrative; she often describes the unpleasant details of the examinations, as
well as the progression of therapy and its devastating effects on her body. Were
it not for the fact that only we the audience can hear what she says, the film could be viewed as a sort of disturbing documentary feel, as if Vivian was being interviewed
by an off-screen crew (well, actually there IS an off-screen crew).

Another common
technique throughout the film involves selective focus on Vivian's face talking
to us, while hospital personnel perform medical tasks in the out-of-focus
background. These scenes considerably strengthen our intimacy with Vivian, and make
us feel like we were at her bedside. Shot composition often emphasizes the
patient's powerlessness in the face of the hospital system. In the shot below,
Vivian's mortification is effectively conveyed by framing the soon-to-be-opened
door right between her legs — a powerful reminder that she and her dignity are
at the complete mercy of doctors.

Waiting for the pelvic examination.

We gradually begin to understand how Vivian's proud intellectualism has erected over the years a wall
between her and the people around, eventually making her an
esteemed but deeply lonely person. She will probably not be remembered by
anyone, except as a name in a critical edition of John Donne's sonnets or as a
case study in the fight against ovarian cancer. At some points we are given flashbacks
that both fill in some gaps about Vivian's past and give us a little relief
from the hospital routine. One of these flashbacks takes us back to the day of
her childhood her passion for words and literature presumably originated, when
her father (played by Harold Pinter, the famous playwright) explained to her
the meaning of the term "soporific"; another introduces us to Donne's
sonnet "Death, Be Not Proud" which is an important motif of the film.
Reality often insinuates itself into remembrances, bringing her back to the hospital
room where she is confined to most of the time. In the image atop this post, past
glory and present suffering coexist as Vivian lectures on Metaphysical Poetry wearing
only a hospital gown.

Mainstream
cinema has recently shown an increasing appetite for stories about disease (aside
from the above mentioned 50/50, other examples are
Dallas Buyers Club, The Fault In Our
Stars, The Theory Of Everything, Still
Alice, to name just a few) but it definitely has some problems with stories
not involving romance nor assuaging the audience's need for edifying messages. This
largely accounts, I think, for the fact that Wit didn't get
theatrical distribution (it aired on the private network HBO in March 2001). In
fact, the movies cited between parentheses conform to one of cinema's most
profitable story template, that of the hero overcoming personal difficulties
and triumphing over unfavorable circumstances thanks to his resourcefulness,
tenacity and courage — in short, the American Dream adjusted for the hospital
ward. It must also be observed that the success of medical drama tv series like
ER, House and Scrubs— a success that Marshall McLuhan prefigured in his 1964 book Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man— has considerably contributed to the audiences'
desensitization to health-related matters. In a sense, Wit at
least partially fits the mold: the heroin has to come to terms with her own weaknesses
and limitations relying on her brilliant intelligence. But the lack of a
broader family context, I suspect, in conjunction with the main character's fierce
intellectualism, must have seriously put producers off.

Unsurprisingly,
Wit elicits contrasting reactions more than any other
film, depending on one's taste for black humor and above all on one's familiarity
with health problems. (By the way, instead of reading my insipid review you'd
better off reading Roger Ebert's moving 2008 blog post about him being unable to re-watch the film.) Whatever one's reaction, after
the viewing we might be asking ourselves what a "realistic" film
actually is. For if we think that realism involves the illusion of reality,
then it doesn't fit the definition — unless we consider realistic a
cancer-stricken patient talking to an imaginary audience without anyone in the
room noticing it. But if with the term we mean a film that stays in our minds
long after it's over, and with the uncanny power to go deep into our
consciousness, then realistic it definitely is.

Note
(*Sterile Polemic Alert*). Italian audiences, whom I happen to belong,
might wonder what the heck a DNR is. Don't be too hard on them; after all we are talking about a country
where the dominant cultural authority pretty much equates euthanasia and murder, and where the legislative void on advance
health care directives is well away from being filled.

1 comment:

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